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Defending Against Remote Man-At-The-End Attacks

Man-at-the-end attacks occur in any setting where an adversary has physical access to a device and can compromise it, by inspecting or tampering with the hardware device itself or the software it contains. A Remote Man-At-The-End (RMATE) attack occurs when an adversary has physical access to an untrusted networked device, compromises it, and then performs malicious activity.

Attacks in the RMATE scenario can affect critical national infrastructure, the intellectual property rights of corporations, as well as the privacy of individuals. Example attack scenarios include compromises of smart meters to effect denial of service attacks in the electrical power grid, tampering of computers in a doctor's office to gain unauthorized access to medical records, violations of Internet protocols to gain an unfair share of network bandwidth, and cheating in networked games by modifying client software.